“From the media.” He sighed. “Bless their souls. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll show you out?” He held his arm toward the door.
Angie and Maddocks exited the sacristy with Father Simon, who then walked them back through the cathedral and down the aisle between the rows of burnished wood pews. Panic began to hiss like steam through cracks into the fringes of Angie’s brain.
Focus. Focus.
In the last row a woman knelt, her head bowed in prayer as she fingered the beads of her rosary. A faint memory darted into Angie’s mind as she saw the two confessional boxes that flanked the last pew. The lights over the doors of the confessionals glowed greenish white, which to Angie’s knowledge meant they were open for confession. A red light meant someone was inside telling a priest of his or her sins.
Angie stopped and turned to the priest. “Did you ever take Gracie’s confession, Father?”
He glanced at the woman praying and said softly, “Let’s talk through there.” He led them into the antechamber that served as a kind of entrance hall to the church. He stood beside the bowl of holy water. “Detective Pallorino, I’m sure you are aware that the Seal of Confession is sacrosanct. It’s the absolute duty of clerics not to disclose anything learned from penitents during the course of the Sacrament of Penance.”
Her pulse quickened slightly. Hedidknow something. She felt it in her gut, saw it hidden in his eyes.
“If Gracie did tell you something that could help us find who did this, it would save other young women a terrible—”
“I would be excommunicated,” he said crisply. “I will die before I break that seal of the confessional.”
Her heart beat even faster, and she felt the shift in Maddocks’s energy, too.
“Not even the highest courts can compel me to break that seal,” he added. “I’m legally protected in this regard by confidentiality laws.”
“Maybe so,” Angie said, “but courts have also ruled that a clergyperson still has a mandatory duty to report any suspicious interactions he might have observedoutsideof the confessional. Possibly Gracie mentioned something through regular pastoral counseling, where confidentiality has limits.”
Their gazes warred. And she felt a chink deepening in this handsome young man of the cloth.
“It’s your job to catch a killer,” he said quietly. “Mine is to save souls.”
“Oh, so yousavedGracie’s soul?” she said. “Think about what she endured—the fear, the torture, the pain as some sick and perverted man tried to ‘save her soul’ in his own deviant way. She suffered, believe me, Father, she suffered. You didn’t save her from that. But you could save others if you are holding something critical back.”
“We all have our suffering, our own crosses to bear, Detective.”
Frustration whipped through her. She opened her mouth to fire off another question just as the cathedral bells started to toll, and she completely lost her train of thought. More bells joined the first ones, the sound growing monstrous as they pealed up high in the steeple and echoed down through the cavernous stone church. She felt confused. Maddocks glanced at her, his eyes narrowing in concern.
“I think we’re done here,” he said, watching Angie closely. “Thank you, Father.”
As he opened the heavy wood door out to the dark winter night, Father Simon suddenly said, “Gracie was conflicted. I can say that much.”
“Conflicted by what?” Maddocks said, still holding the door open. The peals seemed louder from the outside, the sound coming in through the gap in the door. And through that gap, under a halo of streetlight, Angie could see that sleet had turned to soft snowflakes. Her mouth grew dry. Her skin turned hot.
Father Simon’s voice seemed to come from far, far away. “Through the giving of spiritual guidance, outside of the confessional, I can say that Gracie Marie was troubled by her own promiscuity.”
Angie tried to latch on to this, tried to focus on the next question, but her mind was blurred, a panic licking to a fire inside her with the clanging of the bells, the sense of snow, the scent of it coming in through the door which Maddocks was still holding open. Time seemed to stretch, warping everything like elastic.
“Meaning?” Maddocks said.
“Meaning, I was led to believe she regularly had intercourse with many different partners, and it bothered her.”
“She told you this? Outside of confession?” he confirmed.
“Yes.”
“That’s a rather intimate thing to tell a male priest, especially outside of confession. How did it come about? What kind of relationshipdidyou have with Gracie?” Maddocks said.
“She tried her female charms on me.”
“She tried toseduceyou?” Bells clanged louder.
“When I asked her why she was doing this, I came to learn that Gracie was ... needy. She craved love, acceptance. I think she felt abandoned by her father and lonely with a largely absent mother. She also had trouble as a younger child at school with being accepted. From what she told me, sex, giving her body, bought her relationships with boys and subsequent interest from the in-girls at school. It helped her feel that she belonged. At least, I believe this was the case with her previous boyfriend.”
